What is even more local and sustainable than farm to table? Rooftop to table. Rosemary’s just opened in a prime corner location in the West Village. Restaurateur Carlos Suarez of Bobo decided to add another spot to his repertoire. Bobo is one of the popular West Village places to dine in the spring and summer because of their outdoor garden. What many people do not know is that they also have a beehive on their roof. Rosemary’s takes it one step further with their large rooftop garden. Among the produce they grow are zucchinis, tomatoes, radishes, herbs and a variety of lettuces. For ingredients they cannot grow themselves Suarez and the kitchen staff remain close with some local farmers who help supplement the pantry. According to an interview with Business Insider Rosemary’s plans on giving back to the community by inviting local students from P.S. 41 to the rooftop to learn about agriculture and healthy eating and then help by getting involved in the planting and harvesting of produce.

Chef Wade Moises, previously of Mario Batali’s Eataly and Babbo runs the kitchen at Rosemary’s. The cuisine is Italian with a clear focus on the quality of the ingredients. Everything on the menu is relatively reasonably priced with a wine list that puts every bottle at $40.

The space has a very open-air feel to it with two sides that can be completely opened to the outside. With brick walls and wooden furniture the space feels very rustic but also very clean.

I read lots of negative reviews about the service but given that we walked in at 10:30 on a Monday night in the summer there wasn’t too much competition for seating or the waiter’s attention. They did run out of one or two dishes which I had also read about but we’ll chalk that up to being so new. Frankly the most annoying thing that happened was a few other rude patrons at a few points throughout dinner decided to exit the restaurant via our partially outdoor table seating rather than using the door and knocking things on our table. Besides that everything was quite pleasant.

My friend and I decided to share a few things on the menu. To start we had the “rooftop salad” which was mixed greens and some thinly sliced radishes. The salad was nicely seasoned with a lemon vinaigrette.

Rooftop Salad

We also had a few of the small plates from the verdure and frutti di mare sections of the menu.

The beets with dandelion and hazelnut were delicious. The baby vegetables were very tender and did not have a harsh dirt flavor that beets can sometimes have. They were lightly marinated and the toasted hazelnuts were a nice complement. The eggplant caponata was ok but not really a traditional take on a caponata. The bite-sized chunks of eggplant were strangely spongey but had a pretty good tangy-acidic flavor with some salty olives. The tuna was quite good and was marinated but still rare on the inside and served with olives, capers, parsley, and ceci fritti (fried chick peas).

Beets, Tuna, Eggplant

As our mains we shared the special salmon which was served over a variety of small roasted tomatoes and snap peas. The salmon was good but maybe a bit more well done than I generally prefer.

Seared Salmon

The lamb was delicious. The leg was cooked perfectly -rare in the center with the outside seared into a salty crust. In the center was a lamb ragu which was smoother than your normal chunky ragu and formed sort of a sauce for the vegetables. I love heirloom vegetables so I enjoyed the mix of purple carrots and mini asparagus with pearl onions and snap peas.

Lamb Two Ways

I would absolutely recommend Rosemary’s for a healthy and incredibly fresh summer meal- and I really hope they start serving brunch because this would be an ideal brunch location as well.